Gordon Teach, 1917-2009

Trevor Jensen, TRIBUNE REPORTERCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Gordon Teach, a former chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers, was a successful broker who always said he made just one major mistake in his career: failing to join onetime colleague Ray Kroc in a startup burger chain.

Mr. Teach, 91, died of cancer on Monday, Feb. 9, in his home in Inverness, said his son Michael.

Mr. Teach studied finance at Northwestern University, where one of his classmates was John Allyn. That connection helped land him a job with venerable Chicago brokerage A.C. Allyn & Co., where he got real-life lessons in investing. He never did get his college degree, his son said.

From A.C. Allyn, Mr. Teach moved on to Shearson Hammill & Co., remaining until that company was taken over in the 1970s. He then took the president's post with a small brokerage, Illinois Co.

An advocate of long-term investing, one of his oft-stated pieces of advice was, "Don't look at your stocks. Trust what you did,'" his son said.

"He was a unique combination of an analytical mind with a dynamite salesman's personality," Michael Teach said

Mr. Teach was a leader and past chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers, representing the group in Washington. He helped draft a charter for the NASD in the 1960s amid threats of increased governmental regulation

The current Wall Street mess was difficult for Mr. Teach to watch, his son said.

"He was very saddened by what he saw was the original concepts of the [NASD] completely eliminated," Michael Teach said.

A native of Tampico near the Quad Cities, Mr. Teach went to grade school in Chicago and completed high school in Kenosha. During World War II, he flew B-29 Superfortress planes out of India on bombing runs over Japan.

He took a job with Lily Tulip Paper Cup Co. upon his return. Ray Kroc was one of his colleagues until Kroc split off to start the McDonald's hamburger chain. In a 1975 Tribune interview, Mr. Teach recalled a lunch he had had a few weeks earlier with Kroc.

"He asked me if I had ever calculated how much I would be worth today if I would have stayed with him," Teach said. "I told him for that crack, he could pay for lunch."

Mr. Teach remained an active investment consultant well past standard retirement age, joining Great Lakes Advisors in Chicago as an associate in 2001.

Mr. Teach's wife, Mary, died in 2007.

He also is survived by another son, Jeffery; and two grandchildren.

Friends will gather at 2 p.m. before a 5 p.m. service on March 7 in the Inverness Golf Club, 102 Roselle Rd., Inverness.